The Total Package. The Secret History and Hidden Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Other Persuasive Containers by Thomas Hine

This ability of packaging to bypass the intellect and induce a consuming forgetfulness is what makes it so effective. Although packaging pervades daily life and is found in every nook and cranny of the home and workplace, it flies beneath nearly everyone’s analytic radar. It only comes to the fore when there’s a problem. People think about packaging when they have trouble getting it open, or when it’s empty and it contributes to litter or overflowing landfills. But when packaging is working well, people rarely think about it apart from the product it contains.

Packages understand people much better than people understand packages. The Total Package is about how modern packaging developed and how it works now. It considers packaging not primarily as an industry or a cluster of technologies but as an important and often unacknowledged part of modern life. Its premise is that people’s relationships with packages are a good deal more complex than they realize.

From the foreword by the author